Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 18 Dec 2000 03:49:44 -0500 | From | David Feuer <> | Subject | Re: /dev/random: really secure? |
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At 09:21 AM 12/18/2000 +0100, Karel Kulhavy wrote: > > There are hidden sources of entropy. One is clock skew between > the keyboard > > processor's clock, the keyboard controller's clock, and the CPU clock > > generator's PLL. Another is data motion between the CPU cache and main > >In the RFC 1750, they write it is not recommended to rely on computer >clocks to >generate random. Isn't it this case?
This is the case, but the important thing that David Schwartz said is that it does not rely on the time in a clock, but rather on the pretty much completely random skew between several independent clocks. Any particular oscillator will vary in speed semi-randomly, and if you compare multiple clocks you can get pretty random numbers.
-- This message has been brought to you by the letter alpha and the number pi. Open Source: Think locally; act globally. David Feuer David_Feuer@brown.edu
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